Hughes High School - Hughes Yearbook (Cincinnati, OH)

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HUGHES HIGH SCHOOL

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HUGHES HIGH SCHOOL WAY back in 1847, the 'Center School , as Hughes was then called, was opened in the basement of the Lutheran Church, corner of Walnut and Eighth Streets, with H. H. Barney as principal. In 1848, the school moved to Longworth Street, near Race, and occupied rented buildings. In 1852, the first Hughes High School building, on Fifth Street, opposite Mound, was finished, and the pupils joyously entered therein, with Cyrus Knowlton as their principal. It was then regarded as a splendid structure, but its purely Norman style was marred afterward by building an annex across its entire front. Race Street was the dividing line between Woodward and Hughes. In September 1910, the present magnificent building was opened on Clifton Heights. In 1852 the first graduation from Hughes took place at Greenwood Hall, then the largest Auditorium in Cincinnati. H. H. Barney, Cyrus Knowlton, J. L. Thorton, E. W. Coy, E. D. Lyon and C. M. Merry have been the suc- cessive principals of Old Hughesf I entered the rented rooms on Longworth Street, in 1851, and sat as a pupil in Cyrus Knowltonls room for four years- graduating in 1855, being eighteen years of age. And, oh my! what heaps of wisdom I thought I possessed! But now, eighty-two years of age, I feel like Sir Isaac Newton when he declared, HI am only picking up a few bright shells, along the shore of a great unexplored ocean before me. Thousands among our best Citizens have: had HOld Hughes as their Alma Mater. We may all be proud of the grand uplifting influence of our dear HOld School . In the rented Longworth Street rooms, the graduating class brought their lunches in baskets, or in tin buckets. We had no Home Economics department, and n0 auditorium or lunch rooms! The girls ate royally in the school rooms, and the boys used the cellars as a banquet hall! In after years, one of these boys became president of the Cincinnati Board of Education; one became president of a great continental railway; and one became principal of a large intermediate school which sends from 100 to 150 graduates to HOld Hughes, every year. And now, may I Wish that in future years, useful and happy lives may be the fortune of all the graduates of 1919. GEORGE F. SANDS. 19 l

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HUGHES HIGH SCHOOL, 1918-191 9 T is, I believe, one of the pardonable vanities of school life, that each suca I ceeding class should, on the occasion of its graduation, presume to regard its last year within the harboring scholastic walls as the most momentous and illustrious of all those many with which the dear old Alma Mater has been blessed. And so, repugnant as it is to our highly cultivated sense of modesty and natural inclination for self-effacernent, we of the class of 19 cannot refrain from bowing in deference to so. time honored a tradition, and pronounce with all seeming eclatthe pre-eminence of the Year 1918-19 above all others in the long annals of Hughes. But then, aside from the fact of mere class pride, we feel that we are truly justihed in saying that Hughes has never before experienced just such a year as that which now nears its close. In point of numbers the year 1918-19 has surpassed all previous records, there being enrolled 2,199 pupils, together with a faculty of 79. Moreover, it is probable that never again will Hughes house so large a family beneath her maternal roof. For the opening of the new East Side High School will undoubtedly relieve her of many of her present pupils as well as a goodly portion of the oncoming crop of Fr'eshies. There were no indications at the beginning of the year that any phenomenal proceedings would mark the term. Yet the storm was brewing; trouble lay but in the offing. Just a full score days had been rounded out, and we were fairly well upon our journey, when, alas and a'lack! we ran smack into a full grown soulwester which well nigh submerged our frail bark. To speak in less metaphorical and perhaps more vividly memoriferous language, we were, in common with countless other mortals, prohibited from gathering in our wonted places of assemblage; the all-important one of which was to us the school. Never before had we appreciated just what was the nature of a ukase, but there is none of us now, dwelling in retrospect upon the circumstances of the Health Departmentis Hflu ban, who may say, HI wot not of the blessings of autocracy. Five weeks Were the corridors of Hughes hushed and silent; five weeks were the minds of her pupils innocent of books and study. Albeit there occurred in the very last days of that long respite the one great event in the life of this generation. For, as the goddess Aurora came from out the golden tinted east on the mom of November 11, 1918, there stood at her side the blessed hgure of Peace, shedding upon men the world over those rays which reached into their very souls and made their hearts to leap with a joy unbounded and to iill with a gratitude which knew no words. Yes, truly it was the great day, and never shall we forget it. Back to school we hied when it seemed that no more did the black demon, flu, hold its menacing sway. For thirteen days we endured the imposition llll